Ominous Tower of Terror

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Today, we feature a true beacon for the showbiz elite, the Hollywood Tower Hotel.

This photo is kind of a funny story. I drew my inspiration for the processing of the shot from the newly refreshed Disney park maps. On the cover of the map for the Studios, they feature a very dark and ominous Tower of Terror. Usually, I never try to duplicate what Disney does on most of their printed media, mainly because it comes from more of a marketing standpoint. I like having the artistic freedoms that come with not having to have something printed for millions of people to see, usually resulting in more bold colors and deeper blacks and more contrast than the typical brochure-style shots. But, after seeing the new park map today, I decided to edit one of my Tower of Terror shots in a similar fashion.

I had this one from back in August, right after I first acquired the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 Lens. It was a kind of cloudy summer day, and right as the sun started to go down and the lights flipped on at the Tower, I snapped away from over in between the Carthay Circle gift shop and the entrance to the Beauty and the Beast stage show. In Lightroom, I added more blacks than usual, and also made sure to pull the highlights way back to get nice detail in those ominous clouds. The photo may look a little dark on your monitor, and that is done on purpose to add more of a mysterious and creepy feel to the photo. The vignette on it also helped darken the sky and make it even more spooky.

This was taken, as I mentioned earlier, with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 (which I need to shoot more often with, as it really is a beautiful camera) and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 Lens, both of which can be purchased at Amazon. If you shop at Amazon, make sure to click our links first, that will help support the site with anything you buy from over there. Thanks for looking!